My own opinion
When Tillie Olsen was born, she grew up in poor conditions. So it kind of seems that she has written a story more or less about herself. I don’t know why, but after reading this novel I somehow got stuck with that feeling. I think she has sort of identified Mazie as a young role of herself. They both liked to read books and also had their main focus on getting an education.

To be honest I couldn't find a more boring book than this. It was just painful to read through it. Description after description I just got tired of it. It wasn't any action going on at all and that made me sleepy. It was 10 pages with heavy descriptions and 1 page with action. But don't get me all wrong because I think this actually was a great book. This was (and is) actually a book who got a lot of positive reviews and won many prices. It was just the fact that… well, let's just say that it wasn't the type of books I like to read.

You may wonder why I read the book if it was so boring. Well, I don't know for sure, but I can tell you that it wasn't of voluntary reasons. I was simply the lucky one to pick out a book when there was no others left. The choice stood between “Yonnondio” and a manuscript to a theater. Yeah, I know. A tough decision with other words. And when I first began to read the book I thought it would be more exciting gradually, like most books do. I guess I was wrong…


I knew the book was published as an unfinished work when I started, but when I finally came to the last page I got yet so disappointed. When it finally was some action going on it just ended with “…”. My first reaction was something like “this was a big waste of time”, but I eventually, after long thinking, realized that it may, ironically enough, been one of the “best” books I've ever read. It's all the realistic and detailed descriptions that eventually changed my mind. It wasn't like anything I've ever read before (although i barely read any books). The best thing is that the book made my vocabulary larger, so I now understand English slightly better after reading it.

Yonnondio is a book I would recommend to someone who is particularly interested in the American history, like a teacher or something like that. The reason I would recommend it to you teachers is that I think the book will give you a very realistic impression of how the life used to be in the States. The language was hard to understand with words I had never heard before. It was a challenge reading it, so I think you would find Yonnondio quite interesting.





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